Does Gordon Brown really hear what you say?

Back in the early days of this blog, when the only readers were a few Newgate inmates and the Tavern cat, we put forward a suggestion that may, perhaps, bear repeating at this juncture, when Gordon Brown's behaviour is being minutely scrutinised by all.

For anyone with hearing loss, a dinner party is a refined form of torment, featuring constant background noise and the need to make polite responses to questions you have only half understood. This becomes far worse if, for some reason, you cannot admit to your deafness.

Now read Minette Marrin's description of Brown's behaviour at a dinner party - her evidence for describing him as 'a dangerous weirdo':
'At times he fixed a broad, exaggerated smile to his face, almost randomly it seemed, and directed it at someone, but he kept getting it wrong — the wrong moment to smile, the wrong person to smile at and occasionally the wrong place to smile at. When challenged by one guest on some difficult economic point, he kept baring his teeth in the opposite direction, at the lovely bosom of a guest on his other side who was not part of the conversation. He made me think of an android with faulty programming.'

Consider a man of dour temperament placed at a table where he must show he is entertained by the company but is unsure when and whether he has heard a joke - a table, moreover, surrounded by journalists and London chatterati whose collective sense of humour is almost entirely alien to a manse-born Scot.

Add to that the removal from his side of his wife and accomplice - a supportive dinner partner in the know can help effectively disguise a substantial hearing loss from the assembled company; all it takes is constant attentiveness and the ability to repeat relevant information without seeming to do so.

I don't say this is at the root of all Brown's behaviour - far from it, although it does help explain his well-documented habit of ignoring people when they speak to him (see the link above for other examples). It may, however, be an unconsidered factor in the complicated picture now emerging from Downing Street.

Lies, Damn Lies and Unemployment Figures...

...in Michael Blastland's BBC magazine article 'How one woman can cause economic boom or bust'.

Blastland describes a hypothetical worker whose redundancy leads to a 0.1% rise in unemployment figures. The media, ignoring such boring matters as standard deviation and margins of error, jump on the figures and produce headlines that trigger financial panic and crisis.

Blastland argues that even increasing the raw data by a small fraction may lead, via rounding off, scaling up or standardisation, to a significant difference in the end result - something the more responsible climate change scientists have been trying to convey to the media for years. Like food, if data is processed, it usually needs seasoning with a pinch of salt*.

His final caveat - 'Economic data is never a set of facts; it is a set of clues, some of which are the red herrings of unavoidable measurement error' - is a salutary reminder that in the run-up to the election we will be bombarded with facts and figures, all purporting to tell a story.

One wonders how many of the electorate will know or care that the story in question may well be total fiction?

* Although Consensus Action on Salt and Health (H/T Ambush Predator) might have something to say about that.

Where is Everybody?

H/T Witterings from Witney and Mark Wadsworth



How many politicians does it take to have a debate?

If you can tear your eyes away from the person of Nigel Farage in mid-tirade (at about 1.11), you will notice the tiers of empty seats in the chamber. Either they had 'evacuated' the area to spare people the spectacle of Tilly - sorry, Farage - in attack mode or most of the delegates had better things to do that day.

The sight of rows of empty seats in parliament is nothing new - remember when we first heard of 'doughnuting' - but there are times when television makes it all too clear that the lights are on but there's practically no-one at home.

All of which led to Tavern regulars wondering if there's a critical mass. For instance, if there are six people there apart from the Chair, then a speech will surely be made. And five. And even four. But what about three? Slightly embarrassing, perhaps - do you make eye contact? - but you've still got enough for a vote, after all, local quorum rules aside.

But what happens when you get to two? An involuntary intimacy where the interlocutors trade opinions and insults only with each other, while the Chair looks on. No chance of a decisive vote here unless protocol allows the Chair to play. Does that mean that if only three are present and one leaves, the others have to pack up their toys and go home?

And what if there is only one? Does he or she make the speech even if nobody has turned up to hear it? After all, there may be millions of taxpaying television viewers out there waiting to hear - it's hardly fair to lose your chance of raising an issue just because everyone else fancied a lie-in or an early night. It's one of those 'Does-the-light-stay-on-in-the-fridge?' questions.

And in the case of the European Parliament, do the interpreters have to sit in their box all day on the offchance the absent delegates decide to attend - rather in the manner of harem ladies awaiting the arrival of the Sultan? And how did the ones in attendance during Farage's speech translate his picturesque imagery?

Doubtless there are readers out there more knowledgeable than the Tavern regulars about political procedure and we eagerly await enlightenment on all these matters.

Ernest Rutherford Seagull - a Cautionary Tale

A piece of fiction today, with sincere apologies to Richard Bach.

Staff at Sellafield are considering a cull of seagulls as the site is overrun with birds, cats and mice, representing a substantial risk of contamination. Meanwhile, natural wildlife deaths on site mean they have 350 little frozen carcasses in storage as 'putrescent' nuclear waste pending proper disposal.

Ernest Rutherford Seagull hovered in the updraught from the cooling tower, watching mice scurry over the brickwork. The faint glow from his extended wingtips was matched by the eerie luminescence of the waste water lagoons where his friends were swimming.

He knew there was something different about the mice – something new about the way they gathered in small groups, then moved on decisively. Things were changing around Sellafield. Certainly the cats he had seen looked thinner, more desperate. Some of them were even hungry enough to tackle a seagull.

His friend Robert Oppenheimer Seagull manoeuvred into position beside him. Ernest Rutherford Seagull pointed downwards with his beak. “Do you see anything different about them?” he asked.

“So you’ve noticed too.” Robert Oppenheimer Seagull didn’t sound surprised. “I think they’re evolving intelligence. They’ve already learned to evade the cats.”

“Poor little things,” said Ernest Rutherford Seagull. “They probably wish they could fly.”

At that moment there was a loud bang and Robert Oppenheimer Seagull crumpled into a ball, plummeting downwards towards the ground and landing in an untidy heap. A man in a biohazard suit picked him up with tongs and placed him carefully in a freezer bag.

Behind the man the grass stirred, although there was no wind. There was a glimpse of fur, the twitch of a tail, a slight hissing sound. The mutant feral cats were gathering. And they were hungry.

Ernest Rutherford Seagull wheeled on the updraught and flew sadly away towards Whitehaven, his wings still glowing faintly.

At My Command, Unleash Meat Loaf

A reminder of my misspent youth: I've deviated from the rhyme scheme more than usual here because Darling's own words fitted uncannily well...


Alistair's Hell

Oh, Whelan was screaming and McBride was howling
And in Downing street the knives were all out;
There was Brown in the shadows with a glint in his eye -
It was a weekend I could do without.
I don’t know why the briefers did what they did,
One day maybe they will explain,
What I do know, and it’s not a great source of pleasure,
What I said, unfortunately, turned out to be true;
We were bound for a recession again.

Well, maybe there’s no better thing in this whole world
Than knowing you've been right,
And wherever you are and wherever you go
There's always gonna be a fight.
And I know there have been some robust exchanges
Between me and Gordon Brown,
But there’s more that unites us than will ever divide us;
Without me, you know,
He’d really be alone.

And the forces of hell
Were unleashed by Number Ten,
When Brown’s two enforcers
Were let loose and set on me again, again, again.
Yes, the forces of hell
Were unleashed by Number Ten;
But now the day is done
Then Messrs Whelan
And McBride you’ll see it’s true
That I’m still Chancellor of the Exchequer
And there’s only one left of you.

Hey Christine, Can You Keep a Secret?

So Gordon's in trouble for picking on the wee kiddies and his mum - sorry, wife - has decided to stick up for him and tell everyone he's a lovely boy, really.

Guns blazing, she's come out to defend him in public - how embarrassing is that! - and, in a typical move, has decided to do so from the comfort of the GMTV sofa. Piers Morgan, Tesco magazine then GMTV - I suppose that indicates some sort of logical progression.


Meanwhile, Christine Pratt gives a whole new meaning to the word confidential with this update:
“I have even received an email from someone who is alleging that they have [an] issue with Gordon Brown also, but we will be addressing that confidentially.[...] I have received an email. I cannot discuss the detail. It does name Gordon Brown but I'm not able to go into that."

Leaving aside the woman's tortured grammar (and the dubious relationship between the helpline and her business consultancy), there is something distinctly unsavoury about this disclosure; you can see its counterpart in any primary school playground - 'I know something about Gordon, but I'm not telling you what it is!'

In fact, what with Gordon's tantrums and Christine's stories, combined with a fair amount of name-calling from the sidelines by each of the rival gangs, the whole affair is becoming distressingly juvenile.

What it boils down to, after all, is whether Gordon's a bully and whether Christine should have kept a secret; perhaps the best thing would be to call in an experienced primary school head teacher to sort the whole thing out.

And I think I know just where to find one...

Britain's Got Bread and Circuses

Well, actually the bread's in pretty short supply at the moment - what with the global recession and all - but we've sure got circuses. The opiate of today's masses is a ghastly amalgam of glitz, sequins and sob-stories, heavily seasoned with viewer participation.

Thus the Prime Minister, aiming for popular support in an election year, must be seen to endorse this farrago to the extent of public pronouncements - what price dignity these days? - but does it go deeper than that?

In the Sunday Times this week, Rod Liddle interviewed Piers Morgan :

I ask Morgan how well he knows Brown. He says he has always liked him, thinks of him as a friend. They speak once every three or four weeks; Brown will ring for a chat, or ask him over. He says he speaks to Sarah Brown once every week, sometimes he offers advice, same as he might do to Gordon. Advice about how to get the message over to the public.[...]
Crucially, he speaks to the prime minister about the programme he does, Britain’s Got Talent. “Gordon is obsessed with Britain’s Got Talent,” Morgan says, laughing.

Allowing for the fact that this is Piers Morgan relayed by Rod Liddle, think about the implications of Piers Morgan with the confidential ear of the Prime Minister and of Brown actively seeking contact with Morgan. And above all about the Prime Minister being 'obsessed' with a show featuring trampolining pigs and someone farting 'The Blue Danube'.

After all, they do say you can judge a man by the company he keeps.

A Slow Bicycle Race to No. 10

Like one of those magic eye pictures, the events of the past week, when viewed in a slightly different way, suddenly present a whole new political vista. Sir Nicholas Winterton channelling Marie Antoinette, Heseltine's gloomy prognostications and Portillo's doubts, all surfacing at once, add up to one inevitable question.

What if the Tories don't want to win the election?

Think about it - whoever ends up in Number 10 will be tackling a mess of epic proportions with a side order of chaos. It's difficult to identify any area of the public sector which does not constitute a ticking time-bomb, from our unemployable young to future pensions crises, from elderly care to childhood obesity.

Far better to let Gordon et al. return with a perilously slender majority to face inevitable decline and fall, Gotterdammerung and votes of no confidence, after which Cameron can ride in on his white charger and pluck the helpless Britannia from the jaws of disaster to riotous applause.

Meanwhile, Gordon's cronies don't want to have to clear the mess up either. Gordon himself may be clinging on to power with both hands and his teeth, but I can't see his minions relishing the prospect of years of public vilification as chickens come home to roost.

So Gordon and Sarah are given free rein to make use of their organs of choice, Piers Morgan and a supermarket magazine, to court the misery memoir generation. It's hard to imagine the sort of person who contentedly 'shares Gordon's pain' with a nice cup of tea actually getting out there to vote, so no danger there.

And we're likely to end up not only with a hung parliament, but with the undignified spectacle of both leaders trying to avoid power while pretending to campaign for it sincerely. And if that happens, we might even get Clegg for PM.

With Friends Like These...

You have to feel sorry for Dave 'Man of the People' Cameron; first there's Nicholas Winterton's spectacular foot-in-mouth, now it's Heseltine lumbering out of hibernation and foretelling doom to all and sundry, like something out of the darker recesses of Greek mythology.

According to the Times, 'The former deputy Prime Minister said he would "put money" on a hung parliament, with the Tories the largest party. Mr Cameron would then be forced to call a second election later this year to seek a proper mandate to govern.'

With new research showing Cameron's poll lead eroding fast, things could be looking bleak for his party. It's a sobering thought that the electorate may actually be swayed by Brown's media antics, but even without them, the Tories are hardly helping their own cause.

No sooner has Winterton raised the spectre of moats and duck houses - could he really have been unaware of the impact his remarks would have? - than a senior figure casts doubt on their hopes for victory in the forthcoming election.

Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?

Update: Michael Portillo has added his pennyworth to the debate with an article in the Sunday Times deploring the indecisiveness of the Tory party and claiming "The Conservatives are failing the grit test".

It's My Party (And I'll Cry If I Want To)

I wasn't going to post this one on the grounds of taste but when I read this at Plato Says I decided it was probably fair game after all....

IT'S MY PARTY
(To be sung in a lugubrious Scots accent)

Nobody knows where my mojo has gone,
But Mandy and Ed say it’s time
For baring my soul on the Piers Morgan show;
Then the hearts of the voters will be mine.

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to,
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to,
You would cry too if Ed and Mandy said to.

Say that one fails, then I’ll still be alright,
I can still win through with style,
Using Tesco’s store magazine
And my irresistible smile.

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to,
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to,
You would cry too if Ed and Mandy said to.

-----------------
To pursue my campaign there’s no loss I’ll ignore,
No heartstrings I won’t try to wring,
Hoping the voters won’t realise
That New Labour’s wrecked everything.

It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to,
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to,
You would cry too if Ed and Mandy said to.

The Winterton Manoeuvre 2: Set to Music

A coda to Expenses - The Musical



This is livin', this is style, this is elegance by the mile... 

Oh the posh, posh travelling life, the travelling life for me,
Comfy seats and lots of tables, complimentary tea;
If you can’t enjoy the benefits then why be an MP?
Proles Out, Stewards at Hand, posh with a capital P-O-S-H, posh

The people there in second class will always make me frown,
Their noisy children anger me, they never settle down
But I am on expenses so ta-ta and toodle-oo
As I board first class and never have to sit with any of you.

Oh the posh, posh travelling life, the travelling life for me,
Comfy seats and lots of tables, complimentary tea;
And all the other passengers are people just like me,
Proles Out, Stewards at Hand, posh with a capital P-O-S-H, posh

In first class I am sure to find an atmosphere to suit me
If there was any justice then the public would salute me;
They’d understand why I avoid all peasants great and small;
When crowded out by hoi polloi one just can’t work at all.

Oh the posh, posh travelling life, the travelling life for me, 
Comfy seats and lots of tables, complimentary tea; 
When I'm travelling at your expense I do it stylishly 
Proles Out, Stewards at Hand, posh with a capital P-O-S-H, P-O-S-H, P-O-S-H, P-O-S-H... 


Update; sad news of the death of Lionel Jeffries today - 19th Feb. Astoundingly, Wikipedia have already updated their page - do they have someone on permanent obit. duty?

The Winterton Manoeuvre: Open Mouth...Insert Foot...

You can always rely on the Wintertons for a bit of light relief - remember Lady Winterton's ironing board? This week it's the turn of Sir Nicholas, who justified his first class rail journeys by explaining that there was a "totally different type of people" in standard-class train carriages.

It seems that, were Sir Nicholas forced to travel among the proles, he would be unable to work becuase "people would be looking over your shoulder the entire time, there would be noise, there would be distraction."

Moreover, the lower orders would actually have children with them so "there's noise, there's activity. I like to have peace and quiet when I'm travelling." It rather begs the question what do MPs do with their own sprogs when on the move? - perhaps they are consigned to sardine class with the (expenses-funded) nanny.

Unfortunately for Dave Cameron, Man of the People, the spectacle of Winterton defending the frontiers of privilege has played right into the hands of Brown's class warriors. HMS Tory has been quick to distance itself from this man overboard - "the out-of-touch views of a soon-to-retire backbench MP" - but the damage is done.

Update: you'll find a good post on this subject at the Diary of a Geek in Oxfordshire.